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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171263">Lost</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diasimar/pseuds/Diasimar'>Diasimar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Pacific (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fictober 2020, Fictober prompts: "Did I ask?" + "This... this makes it all worth it."</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:34:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,338</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171263</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diasimar/pseuds/Diasimar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>To the outside world it often seemed they were poorly matched, opposites in every way.  But they knew it was always this - two forces, headstrong as the elements but perfect complements without which the other lost its meaning and power.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Merriell "Snafu" Shelton &amp; Eugene Sledge, Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lost</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Studebaker rumbled over what only the most charitable would call a ‘road’ of washed out potholes and fallen pine limbs barely a car-length wide. They were headed home from their first ever road trip in the new car (well, new to them anyway - fresh off the Used lot and the first thing Eugene ever bought with his own money), and the sun glinted so sharply in the rearview mirror as it sank into the Western horizon that he had to adjust it away from his eyes.</p><p>It was clear the shortcut Eugene had insisted would get them home fifteen minutes quicker was just an abandoned logging route leading to the middle of nowhere. Eugene hated driving at night, and the creeping twilight made him anxious and grumpy. His passenger was no help.</p><p>“I think we’re lost,” Snafu said, his voice lively with the adventure of minor adversity.</p><p>“Did I ask?” Eugene hissed.</p><p>The corner of Snaf’s mouth curled up. He enjoyed it when his boy showed a little teeth. “Woo!” he hollered, “Got a live one today!”</p><p>“Will you just shut up and help me look for a street sign?” There was nothing around them but woods, but he refused to abandon the hope they were simply on a sparsely-traveled county road.</p><p>“Sure I will, darlin’. Let’s see…” Snafu pointed to a low-hanging pine bough that sagged from its trunk. “I think that one there said You-Should-Listen-To-The-Handsome-One Avenue.”</p><p>Gene didn’t laugh. In fact, he now intended to follow this road to its end even if they wound up in Mexico just to spite Snaf. Every rotation of the wheels lowered his threshold for irritation. When the engine sputtered and they rolled to a jerking halt, he was mad as a hornet.</p><p>“Not. A word.”</p><p>Snafu mimed zipping his mouth and stifled a laugh behind his hand. When Eugene flicked his index finger against the fuel gauge that still showed a quarter tank, it instantly plunked to E. That was more than Snaf could take. He honked a sharp “Ha!” followed by a shoulder-shaking fit of laughter.</p><p>“It’s not funny, Mer! It’s gonna be pitch dark in an hour and we’re miles from the turnoff. What are we gonna do?”</p><p>Snafu knew Gene well enough to see that his bark was masking a borderline panic, and he bit the inside of his cheek to try and dam up the giggles. “C’mon Genie, we’ve slept in worse places.”</p><p>“How about food? Water?”</p><p>“I got somethin’ betta,” Snaf said, pulling out a flask from his shirt pocket. His indomitableness was a recurring source of friction between them, but in stressful times Eugene was secretly glad that Snafu took everything, good or bad, in the same devil-may-care stride.</p><p>He offered the flask to Eugene first, and the redhead glugged two shots worth before handing it back to its owner who decided not to partake in case Gene needed more nerve-calming before the night was through. He opened the door and stepped out to survey the trees.</p><p>“Where are you going?” Gene asked, still waiting for the bourbon to have some effect.</p><p>“Longleaf, that’ll do,” Snafu muttered under his breath, then answered - “I’ll stay where you can see me, Mama Gene, don’t worry.”</p><p>He pulled his knife out of his jeans and set off toward the biggest specimen nearby. He pried off the brittle scales of outer bark and started carving into the softer fibers below. It was October, and the seeds were falling from their cones with every breeze, spinning like dervishes on their paper wings. He unbuttoned his shirt and layed it out flat on the ground to collect whatever fell while he worked.</p><p>Eugene watched at first from the car, then got out and stood near him, unsure of how to help but wanting to appear useful. Snafu winked at him and beckoned him over with a chin-tilt. They kissed, and afterward Eugene’s penitent eyes were all the apology Snafu needed for his sour attitude earlier.</p><p>Before the last shimmer of daylight disappeared, they gathered up Snafu’s impromptu dinner and feasted like vagabonds on the whitebark and shelled seeds. It wasn’t bad, Eugene thought as he followed Snaf’s instructions, softening the bark in his mouth for a few moments, then biting down and extracting the juice before spitting out the pulp - it was the texture of sugar cane and tasted the way his father’s woodshop smelled, and the seeds were downright tasty with a resiny sweetness that stayed on the tongue. Gene didn’t need to ask where Snafu learned how to eat a pine tree. He knew enough about his childhood to understand this was one of Necessity’s recipes.</p><p>After their meager meal, Snafu took advantage of having a captive audience to tell his most outrageous stories, adding new embellishment that would serve as the base for the adornment of some future retelling - an endless pyramid of bullshit. Somewhere in the heart of each tale was the truth, but Eugene learned early on that wasn’t the point.</p><p>He took another dram of the whiskey and let it warm his chest, and before he knew it he was laughing at a story about the time Snafu watched the town drunk run twenty feet up a telephone pole to snatch a five dollar bill someone had pinned there with a dart. Last time, Eugene recalled, it had been twelve feet and one dollar. Next time it might be clear to the top to nab the missing piece of the Hope Diamond. It didn’t matter. The joy was in the telling and the listening.</p><p>When Gene started feeling drowsy, they smuggled themselves into the back of the Studebaker’s spacious cab. Gene removed his shirt and pants to create a makeshift pillow. It was a perfect seventy degrees outside, and the warmth of Snafu’s chest on his back was enough to make him doze.</p><p>A few minutes into his drift, he felt Snaf’s hand stray down until it skimmed over his shorts and gave him a little squeeze.</p><p>“You can’t be serious.”</p><p>“Well what else we gonna do out here?”</p><p>“Sleep.”</p><p>“I ain’t tired.”</p><p>Gene rolled his eyes and punched the pile of his clothes into a somehow less comfortable shape. “Then lay here. Quietly.”</p><p>Snafu sighed, his hand retreating back to Gene’s chest.</p><p>Gene closed his eyes and tried to get himself back on the right side of that blurry veil of sleep, but now dammit all he could think about was how much he wanted Snaf’s hand back on his dick. It grew uncomfortably against his leg, and he reached to reposition it onto his stomach. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted exactly ten sheep before rolling over and surprising his Cajun with a warm, wet kiss.</p><p>Snafu seemed both alarmed and prepared, as if he knew Eugene was going to give in but it happened a few seconds before the countdown ended in his head.</p><p>The energy behind his kiss (and the hardness behind his shorts) told Snafu exactly what he wanted, and he groped for their overnight bag in the dark while Eugene rutted against his leg and worked off their underwear. When Snaf's hand found the bag, he felt around for the vaseline, and he got enough for both of them. But before he could apply it anywhere, Eugene scooped it from his hand and worked it into himself and then over the hard jut of Snafu, who gasped in surprise at the reversal of its usual placement.</p><p>“You sure, Genie?” he asked, breathless at the prospect of what he was suggesting.</p><p>The redhead didn’t use words. He sat them both up, then turned around on the bench seat and positioned himself on his knees and forearms.</p><p>Among Snafu’s many cat-like qualities was the ability to comfortably balance on the narrowest of surfaces. He staked one knee on the hump between the floorboards and the opposing foot on the seat like a pirate captain on a rum barrel. Eugene was bent in front of him with all the grace of a possum, but Snafu had always found his lack of seductive powers endearing. He was simply Eugene - at all times - and that suited him just fine.</p><p>He teased him open slowly, guiding just the head in and out before adding an inch, then another, then another, all the way down until he was surrounded by a heat that felt like fever. Eugene panted at each new intrusion, but once he was filled he pulled at himself and moaned so loud it put the other nocturnal animals to shame.</p><p>Snafu took his time, partly for Eugene’s sake and partly to keep from cashing his check too soon. He let himself glide at half the pace of his heart, savoring the way Eugene’s muscle gripped so smooth and tight. He had the sweetest little ass, pale and heart-shaped with a perfectly pink hole. He could see it all in his mind’s eye, but in the pitch black of the woods there was only touch and sound to guide him. He wanted everything.</p><p>He reached up and turned on the dome light, and Eugene immediately tensed under him. It was a reflex that anyone keeping a vital secret would know well. They didn’t even make love in their own bedroom with the lights on, lest they cast a suspiciously shaped shadow. Snaf didn’t get to do this very often, and the thought of missing out on the view was like threatening a child that Christmas might be canceled. He stopped moving and tried to relax him.</p><p>“There’s nobody around, baby. I just wanna see you.” He ran his hands in comforting circles over Eugene’s lower back and then worked his thumbs into the muscles until his body started to slacken. “Is that alright? Can I see my beautiful boy?”</p><p>Gene responded by easing himself down to the base of Snafu’s cock and clenching there several times.</p><p>Snafu barely sounded like himself when he whined, “Fuck,” and spread Gene’s ass to watch him flutter. Snaf was a visual man, and being able to watch what he felt put an exponent on the sensation. He admired his cock as it slid back and forth into Gene’s tightness. On one stroke he took it all the way out and saw the gape of the muscle waiting to take him again. It made him feel feral and powerful. When he growled and Eugene whimpered at his re-entry, it felt like the dynamic was exactly as nature intended here in the safety of her wild woods.</p><p>He fucked into him hard, Eugene now fully open and able to take it deep. Snaf circled an arm around Gene’s waist and jerked his cock in perfect rhythm, feeling him get harder, impossibly hard, and then erupting over his hand with a compressed shout of pleasure. Snaf pulled it back and sucked the cum from his fingers, licked it from the webbing of his thumb, and felt himself pass the point of no return.</p><p>When Snafu’s gravelly moans signaled he was close, Eugene spread himself with both hands, and that was the end of one Merriell Shelton. He pulled out and sounded almost frantic in his commands. “Hold it open, keep it open baby. Don’t move don’t move. Ah yeah.” His aim was true, and he filled Gene up to the brim before plunging back inside him to come down in his warmth.</p><p>Eugene was water after receiving him, limbs all liquid and useless, words flowing, affection bubbling up from every part of him. Snaf was fire, roiling inside from head to toe, hot breath and red cheeks that no traces of Creole blood could hide. To the outside world it often seemed they were poorly matched, opposites in every way. But they knew it was always this - two forces, headstrong as the elements but perfect complements without which the other lost its meaning and power.</p><p>Snafu switched off the cabin light before it taxed the battery. They stretched out as best they could on the backseat, and he held the taller man close, soothing his trembles and kissing his auburn hair where the sweat made it smell sweet. Gene basked in his attention and the freedom of being seen and unseen.</p><p>“This,” he whispered in the dark, “this makes it all worth it.”</p>
<hr/><p>The next morning they woke in their cramped quarters stiff and sore.</p><p>“Think I slept better in a goddamn foxhole,” Snafu muttered, rubbing at the crick in his neck.</p><p>“You’re gettin’ old, Shelton.”</p><p>He was barely thirty, but Eugene never missed an opportunity to remind him of the two years that separated them.</p><p>Snafu smirked and flipped him off, then helped him out of the car. They got dressed and set off toward the main road, hoping they could hitch a ride from there to the nearest gas station.</p><p>“Looks like I ain’t the only one, boy,” Snafu joked as he watched Eugene pull up to a stop every few yards and do a little skip to get moving again.</p><p>“My sore ain’t got nothing to do with age,” he answered. He was smiling, but Snafu still felt a pang of concern.</p><p>“You alright? Was I too rough?” he asked with worried eyes.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Gene assured, then grabbed the smaller man’s oversized hand and kissed it so he’d get that pitiful look off his face.</p><p>Snaf kissed his cheek, and they strolled hand in hand while they knew they could. Eugene enjoyed the silence and tried to identify a few birdsongs, but it was short-lived. Today they were Earth and Wind… or maybe Hot Air would be more accurate.</p><p>“I eva tell you bout the time I stole the watermelons outta old man Ferguson’s garden?”</p><p>“And he shot at you three times?”</p><p>“Oh it was half a dozen times at least. Took the top clean offa one of those watermelons! But I didn’t drop eitha one of em. Made it all the way home.”</p><p>Eugene chuckled and shook his head. “Tell me again.”</p>
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